Numeral strings: we need your help!

["Mark E. Shoulson" <cbmvax!uunet!CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!shoulson>]

   Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1992 10:42:30 +1100
   From: nsn%MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu

   I vote for your position on strings like repai.

That's kinda ambiguous, Nick.  I take it you mean John's?

I also don't trust "repai" for 2pi.  I could see sanctioning its use
informally and unofficially, among people who knew what you were talking
about, but as to its official definition, I think you'd want to require the
"pi'i".  "repai" seems, at first glance, to be 20*pi, but maybe not...

   I vote that {zei} be deallocated, and the space given to one of the currently
   deallocated cmavo.

Don't think factorials are really important?  Ok....

   In contrast to your position on {repai}, though, and after initial
 opposition,
   I do support the oddity {ropa}, and in general the concatenation of
 "adjective
   PA" and "digit PA", for pragmatic reasons, even though {rolopa} is the
   actual meaning (ropamei *is* handy; in fact, I came up with it independently;
   it's a bad thing to have a backlog, friend). Similarly for du'e, mo'a etc.

   As a whole Lojban's PA grammeme is an odd collection, with few analogies in
   the world's languages. Forms like {ropa} are *not* obvious, and require
   explanation in any presentation such as you're doing.

"ropa" meaning what?  "All-of-one"?  Or "One-which-is-all-there-is"?  The
latter makes more sense to me, and.. oh, yes, I see, it conforms to
"rolopa".  Fine.


~mark